agriculture; the whole earth had become a garden.

'So watching, I began to put my interpretation upon the things I had

seen, and as it shaped itself to me that evening, my interpretation

was something in this way. (Afterwards I found I had got only a

half-truth--or only a glimpse of one facet of the truth.)

'It seemed to me that I had happened upon humanity upon the wane.

The ruddy sunset set me thinking of the sunset of mankind. For the

first time I began to realize an odd consequence of the social

effort in which we are at present engaged. And yet, come to think,

it is a logical consequence enough. Strength is the outcome of need;

security sets a premium on feebleness. The work of ameliorating the

conditions of life--the true civilizing process that makes life more

and more secure--had gone steadily on to a climax. One triumph of a

united humanity over Nature had followed another. Things that are

now mere dreams had become projects deliberately put in hand and

carried forward. And the harvest was what I saw!

'After all, the sanitation and the agriculture of to-day are still

in the rudimentary stage. The science of our time has attacked but

a little department of the field of human disease, but even so,

it spreads its operations very steadily and persistently. Our

agriculture and horticulture destroy a weed just here and there and

cultivate perhaps a score or so of wholesome plants, leaving the

greater number to fight out a balance as they can. We improve our

The Time Machine